FROM Joseph Lister's trailblazing work on antiseptic surgery to the world's first radiology department, Glasgow Royal Infirmary has made its mark on the history of medicine.
Now a new heritage museum based at the hospital is inviting everyone from NHS staff to city tourists to discover the pioneers who helped shape modern healthcare.
"It's quite unique - it's the only live hospital that has a museum on site," said Dr Hilary Wilson, a consultant rheumatologist who first came up with the idea for the museum five years ago.
In 2020, she co-founded the Friends of GRI charity with colleague, Dr Kate Stevens, to fundraise for the initiative.
Although progress on the project was slowed by the pandemic, the facility - which is accessed via Cathedral Square - finally opened its doors at the end of May and is now open to the public from 1pm-3pm on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons.
It has already been added as an attraction on the Glasgow Hop-On/Hop-Off bus tour, and the medics hope eventually to recruit enough volunteers to open every afternoon from Tuesday to Saturday.
In the meantime, however, they encourage anyone wanting to visit out of hours to contact the Friends of GRI website.
"This whole project has given everyone in the hospital a real feelgood factor and camaraderie," said Dr Wilson.
"It makes people feel like they belong to something special, and it's a space where people can come and have a time out at work and steep themselves in why it all matters."
READ MORE: Meet Rebecca Strong - the Glasgow matron who revolutionised nursing
Over the past two years, Dr Wilson and Dr Stevens have amassed a large and eclectic selection of artefacts celebrating the history Glasgow's oldest hospital, which first opened in 1794.
Items on display include commemorative Lister stamps from 1965 marking 100 years of antisepsis, alongside one of the famous surgeon's papers published in an 1869 edition of the Lancet explaining the importance of cleaning cat guts before using them to suture wounds.
There is a 'Palmer Injector' - the very first insulin needle; a £34 subscription note from Blantyre Miners at a time, pre-NHS, when they had to pay upfront if they wanted to be able to admit any injured workers to hospital; and a set of nursing notes from the 1940s echoing complaints still familiar today - lack of beds, ward duties "continually interrupted by visitors" and a "dining room service [that] is quite inadequate".
An original set of X-ray tubes pays homage to John Macintyre, an electrician-turned-doctor who set up the "department for the use of electricity in medicine" at the GRI in 1887 - paving the way to the world's first radiology department.
Caricatures of famous hospital characters drawn by Dr Osborne Henry 'OH' Mavor, a physician at the GRI from 1913, docorate one of the walls.
Mavor - an artist and playwright who went by the pseudonym James Bridie - founded the Citizens Theatre and the Glasgow University Union's all-night party, "Daft Friday".
Among the standout photos on display is an image of surgeon William Macewen and the GRI's first matron, Rebecca Strong - a formidable alliance - pictured together in an operating theatre mid-procedure.
Macewen, a student of Lister, famously carried out the world's first successful intracranial surgery at GRI in 1879 when he removed a brain tumour from a teenage girl, while Strong - who had trained under Florence Nightingale - revolutionised how nurses were trained.
READ MORE: William Macewen, the Glasgow surgeon behind the world's first successful brain tumour op
The museum includes a photograph of a 1923 GRI Nurses' Reunion Dinner where Strong was guest of honour, alongside a menu card from the evening detailing its six course feast: hors d'oeuvres; croute au Pot; haddock a l'Italian; roast turkey, vegetables and potatoes; peach melba; and coffee.
"There were so many things around the hospital which were of historical value or interest, but they weren't really kept anywhere," said Dr Stevens, a consultant nephrologist.
"They were just scattered about places. Gradually, as people got to know what we were doing - a porter, a guy from security - they'd come to us and say 'look, we found this', so we started to amass things."
READ MORE: Joseph Lister, X-rays, and nursing - how the GRI made modern medicine
They hope that the museum "tells a story" to visitors, and can double up as an event space at night.
Among the volunteers delighted to be taking part is Olive Burnside, whose brush with listeriosis 30 years ago at the end of her pregnancy with twins left a lasting interest in the pioneering medic after whom the bacterial infection is named.
"All three of us were in mortal danger but it was a junior doctor who eventually diagnosed listeriosis," said Mrs Burnside.
"Listeria then was very unknown and I'd had various doctors coming in, not knowing what was going on.
"I had an emergency C-section and while I was recovering in the Queen Mother's [maternity hospital] I had a visit from this doctor who happened to be a descendent of Lister - a great-grandson or nephew or something.
"He told me who he was, and said he just wanted to see someone who'd had listeriosis."
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